dot com but up next on our team we have brought you a set would have been martin stay with us. happy friday folks i'm happy martin this is breaking that a liberal lion next mayor of new york bill de blasio by name his choice for and y.p. the commissioner now based on his campaign promises one would expect a blazin to fill those crucial position with individual vehemently against the racist and narrow minded stop and frisk program but that would be just too logical and hope instead of blasio is gone with bill bratton who served as new york's top cop twenty years ago and most recently is l.a.p.d. chief of police and as it turns out not only was he an innovator of the controversial program back then but he thinks pretty highly of the way this harassing technique is being used today just listen to what he told journalist jeffrey toobin he said if the cops are not doing stop and frisk they are not doing their jobs it is

a basic fundamental tool police work and the whole country if you do away with stop and frisk this city will go down the chute as fast as anything you can imagine. wow looks like the blasio picked a real ingenious thinker and sadly that's just the beginning when bratton served as l.a.p.d. chief he approved and supported a program that mapped large swathes of muslim communities to identify potential terrorists and claimed it wasn't racial profiling not to mention his connections to several companies that sell technology and surveillance care to police forces across the country so let's hope this isn't a case of for me once shame on you for me twice you can't get forward again when it comes to build a blasio now let's break this at. the in the. it was a really very hard to take that or. should. i do that or how to act would that hurt their little.

little. sleep. facing more than eighteen billion dollars in debt the city of detroit finally filed for bankruptcy last july yesterday a u.s. district court judge authorized the city to go forward with its findings for chapter nine judge steven rhodes said that negotiating and reaching a deal with the city's one hundred thousand creditors would have taken far too long for their prevented detroit from delivering vitals city services disturbingly this ruling means that the pensions for thousands of detroit city employees could be

slashed even though they were guaranteed long ago so they break down the complexities of detroit's bankruptcy and shed light. what this decision means for other cities in financial peril i'm joined now by richard wolffe economist and professor emeritus at the university of massachusetts always amazing to have you on richard. thank you for inviting me so richard what do you think is this bankruptcy decision the best outcome for detroit. no it's not it's one of the worst outcomes and i think you're right to point to this issue of the pensioners it is a historic moment it is saying to the workers of that city and in fact to the workers of all this country that when you sign a contract with an employer and you give up wages and benefits now to get a pension in the future and the employer agrees with you to do that that if and when that employer gets into difficulty they can act as if they never made the

commitment they can forget all that you for when through all that you did without to get a pension and take the pension away when you add that the crisis in detroit is because of large corporations general motors ford and chrysler decided it's more profitable to go elsewhere they could leave behind that disaster and now make the people who work for this city pay for it by being destitute in their old age it is an amazing marker of where we have come as a country we've certainly come of far away richard in the wrong direction let's talk about it trig on the situation and you talk about the accidents of these auto companies also talk about how wall street was involved in bankrupting the city. well you know in the early years because this decline of detroit is a matter of several decades now it speaks volumes to the incapacity of the governors of message of michigan to the presidents of the united states to all the

people that saw what was happening to step in and do something but because they couldn't and they wouldn't be allowed this city. even though they bailed out those auto companies it left the city desperate so they turned to wall street to get certain kinds of financial help to see them through the hard times now they've discovered that those are very arrangements that wall street quote unquote helped them make turn out to have been profitable for wall street but are further burden rather than a help on them so that they've been hurt not only by the big oil companies made a big car companies but also by the financial industries and again the failure of those arrangements is being taken out of the hides of the school teachers and the garden and park maintainers and the police and fire servers who worked our full lifetime for that city it is astonishing to watch and even if you don't understand

the economics the sheer more reality of it is mind blowing it is indeed let's get more of this pension issue it's estimated that twenty three thousand retirees will see their pensions slash i mean is there any way to prevent this from happening richard. roth is certainly i mean let's give you just two examples one the bailout at the highest estimates of the city's obligations to the pensioners is estimated to be three and a half billion dollars by contrast the federal government gave to general motors fifty billion dollars general motors is a company detroit is a city which at that time of the bailout almost a million people democracy alone would say if you can be allowed a company for fifty billion you could find three and a half billion to save thousands of people's pensions but the second question is do something in the relatively well off state of michigan to draw in the wealthy the

large corporations who have evaded their tax responsibilities for decades. and say to them look you've been making out like bandits it's time for those at the top the biggest and the riches to pay what they should have been paying all along and if you did that you would be able to get the money that would be able to have this city on its obligations to the people who gave lifetimes of work to maintaining that said richard you just hit it right on the head which is that detroit's audio and history has received a bailout many times over why is it that corporations are considered more important to bail out than the people of this country. but the irony is because they've made so much money that they have figured out that having become so rich relative to everybody else both the big companies relative to businesses as a whole and both the richest among us relative to everybody else that their soul

out of touch with everybody else that they better control the political system or else the obvious will happen that the majority will use the one person one vote electoral system to undo the inequality generated by the economy and so to prevent that the corporations control the parties the politicians the think tanks they give the money they provide the support and sold our politics becomes more and more disconnected from what the mass of people in detroit but in the country as a whole want and we get these outcomes that make no sense and that contradict the first basis of any real democratic system and what do you think about the pushback argument that you know it's either pay these promised pension funds or keep you till the service is operating you you make the choice i mean of course people are going to say well we have to keep the utility services operating. that's a little bit like saying to a person on the street i'm going to give you choice you can either have me stab you

or i will know the answer to that the answer to that is never to argue which is the better way to go the answer to that is to say i don't mix. that choice and i don't accept the choice for detroit of either cutting the pensions or cutting the utilities my ensor is do something finally to correct the grotesque imbalances of wealth and power in the united states help the people who need it most who've given the most and who have the least responsibility for this crisis they're the ones the reason detroit is in trouble is because this economic crisis has made so many people only employed on able to pay taxes while a small percentage get very wealthy everyone knows that go in after those people to raise the money they can best of ford to do what's right by the people of this country or else you're driving a wedge inside the united states that we will all come to regret in the years ahead

absolutely it is a false dichotomy thanks for breaking through that richard award for columnist professor emeritus at university of massachusetts thanks so much. thank you. both guys it's about that time for viewer feedback starting with the you tube there is road over two hundred eighty episodes bt has done your feedback about nine or eight times and you spend roughly a minute to a minute and a half on the segment b.t.s. going to spend on average a minute on the viewer feedback segment why can't they do it more often since it's average viewer feedback every thirty one point five episodes wow thank you so much for doing the math and since it means so much to you this is for you men we want to james alexander fish from you tube who writes abby is nothing more than a well scrubbed route how does not mean it's been going on in the u.k.

for a while now and it seems to come to us it would seem obvious how many of those have decided because the increase was less than one percent that makes it a myth let me explain something to you james since you seem to think i get told what to say about my shadow and inners lives or not i've never even spoken to putin but seriously i never said that people aren't getting knocked out randomly of course that's happening and it sucks for the people who are victimized by it what i am saying is that random assaults are nothing new nor is it on the rise anywhere so stop getting sucked into the fear mongering sensationalism you dish out old rube. feeling commented on yesterday's episode saying this show is incredibly cynical i can't watch it anymore now this common actually makes me sad because it's incredibly exhausting and it's a tremendous burden to be research into this intense material day in and day out just like and provide this unreported news for you the viewer i care so much about these topics that it shows and sometimes i can be really angry or sarcastic but i

always ask every guest what can be done and i always try to get tools for action so people can be proactive with. it's information and that's all we can ever do and i can ever do thanks so much for everyone for watching and writing as always now let's keep breaking the sad. war is probably the most complex and difficult human activity. all of us are still locked up. in the phenomenon of friendly fire probably extends back to the invention of gunpowder. just killed a bunch of people you know don't know what they're up there really is there really

us people. reading. this some of them shoots my brother in the leg not intentionally because it because it was ny times four in the morning even the best commanders even the mesh shoulder. are going to make mistakes this is this whole idea of brotherhood and author. and camaraderie in this sense it was in this context that has absolutely no place. quite often countries rich in natural resources are the poorest africa's a colony it's a colony of the big corporations it's a colony of some of its own leaders who are under the thumbs of the big corporations so they have to beg from the world bank's development of social programs goes to pay back debts country is drowning under the amount of debt

that they had and so every year they would borrow money. and they would use it so. but there is money to pay back oh that's going to all that money really. the wages of dead. yesterday fourteen members of the hacktivist group anonymous appeared in california's federal court to enter pleas for their role in attacking the website pay pal known as the pay pal fourteen the group briefly took down the website in two thousand and ten after pay pal started blockading donations for wiki leaks eleven members of the group pled guilty to one federal count of conspiracy and one misdemeanor of damaging a protected computer in return it's expected that these eleven anons will have the federal charges adjourned so they break down this case and what it means for the

hacktivist community at large i'm joined now by investigative journalist alexa o'brien who's been covering the case was just there yesterday thank you so much for coming on alexa. having me so pay pal wanted five point five million dollars in damages now the only and the collectively pain thousand dollars a pay pal how these damages assessed in the first place. well that's a bit of a mystery because the plea deal that was structured through the settlement conferences that i've been happening over the last year which boiled down to one felony count which with the witch with the eve which was either conspiracy or damaging a protective computer and then the misdemeanor was adversely affecting a networker system. those were all hammered out like i said in a settlement conference the the process of trying to produce the damage or lack of damage evidence from pay pal because the government didn't have ownership over it

was a series of of you know essentially sidestepped subpoenas by e-bay and pay power what cited in the. records is a couple of items the five point five million that you reference also the f.c.c. filing which apparently. a claim to know did e.-bay claimed no damage on and then there's the public statement of pay pal spokespeople both in the new york times stating that the website wasn't down at any time. and that the system was in their system for their customers wasn't affected by the distributed denial of service and very interesting a i have to bring up here only. been imposed because i was following your whole twitter thread with him about it where he writes if we want to make parallels between real world protests and online protests that means one thousand people can have the effect of six million people demonstrate in front of your office that seems like an excessive impact on the hands of each person. is

not the point to put how are power in the hands of the people that would normally be ignored by most of corporations. you know he made a really important point and you know i responded to him publicly that it's outrageous how the policy group of pay pal executives how much havoc they can rack on you know essentially. extralegal censorship of media organizations like wiki leaks with their you know high orbit government can and referring you know to the lower bit i. can and that was used to automate the distributed denial of service attack by the anonymous collective. and what do you think what i'm saying that pay pal but the people of fourteen should have received leniency only if they didn't know what the only if they didn't know but they weren't aware of the full impact of their actions. will i find that the the

presentation of this op ed after the plea deal has been hammered out is completely illogical. here is the chair of e-bay which is a movement. in this case is well aware of the plea deal that has been hammered out because according to people i've spoke to they were actually consulted by the department of justice so why the call for leniency after the plea deals already been hammered out and the co-defendants are going you know going to court to essentially plead guilty to a felony and a misdemeanor count it looks to looks like a p.r. campaign to me to. essentially present himself as somehow an advocate for these individuals i think that his actions show me at least that he is not the one. who is recently sensitive two years federal probation and ate one hundred

eighty three thousand dollars fine for being part of a did a u.s. attack for just one minute why do you think this disproportionate sentence was received compare. the pay pal fourteen. i can't say i do know that these are highly politicized cases we look at the pay pal case for example the former director of the f.b.i. used the pay pal fourteen case to justify increased appropriations for the f.b.i. under the mantle of cyber security prosecutions i'm so this is this is big business you know in washington and also clearly if you look at the structured settlement that happened with the pay pal case. which was the first major cybersecurity case in the post wiki leaks world. essentially the d.o.j. extracted from this plea deal one plea to a felony count and what's important about that is that allows the f.b.i. regardless of whether that felony count gets you know actually withdrawn in

a year's time it allows the f.b.i. to count on their says statistics for cyber crime so this is really about the lack of debate that we've had a year ago two years ago about online protest about the fact that culture is conducted predominantly online especially amongst. many politically active people today or younger people too and that we need to really actually examine the economic and social logical landscape that we currently exist in and not rely on models from twenty years ago to try to discuss the first amendment the freedom of the press and what's at stake for larger society i couldn't agree more aspersions and seeing what's happening with actual just regular protests outside of the complete militarization the police i mean it really is time to reevaluate the whole concept of the alexa thanks for explaining that you know i was just saying that the case even though it's totally different it does seem like they're almost going the

route of the music industry where they're kind of holding up these you know putting these people basically making. you know. making. i don't know the word i'm looking for basically making a role model of this guy and just saying you know we can charge you with hundreds of thousands of dollars to scare everyone else you know you point out that the pay pal fourteen knew very well that they could be prosecuted for their actions but did it anyway they did it to change the dialogue talk about the precedent that you think this case will set for the future. well i think that this in a certain sense has been has given the d.o.j. a pass on on prejudicially prosecuting people who clearly did not intend nor did they damage the pay pal system in the words of people's own spokespeople. and their f.c.c. filing this is really about intimidating people and so the precedent that the sense i do think that the the the defense counsel for the paper fourteen. you know really

. legally advocated in this case in an intelligent in an aggressive manner the precedent that this sense is that the american public is going to just simply continue to allow individuals to be treated this way by the department of justice and it's going to intimidate people and people be afraid of coming out for the next round of protests that to occur absolutely and thank you so much look so bright investigative journalist on the ground covering this case really appreciate you coming in. thank you. yesterday the world lost a hero. former south african president and anti-apartheid leader nelson mandela

passed away at the age of ninety five mandela was an inspiring revolutionary who not only changed his country he changed the entire world as a young south african living under full apartheid mandela became involved in and to colonial politics the work to dismantle the oppressive system of institutionalized racism as a young man mandela got involved in politics rose quickly in the ranks of the african national congress and as a lawyer he oversaw the one nine hundred fifty five congress of the people that produced a charter that later became a manifesto for the liberation movement and one hundred sixty two mandela was convicted of sabotage and conspiracy and sends to life in prison as a political dissident he served twenty seven years about sentence to the efforts of the international community rallying for his release now the entire media machine is covering mandela's death and his stork legacy as well they should however it's being framed with a neocolonial bias of american exceptionalism see what the media won't tell you is

who nelson mandela really was and what he really stood for and how it was actually the good old central intelligence agency that was responsible for his arrest in the first place that's right a former cia official admitted in one thousand nine hundred eighty it was the agency that provided the details of mandela's whereabouts and turn him over to south african security they had dasa to call it quote one of our greatest coups so what else is the media not telling you to start did you know mandela was a communist yes the big red. scary c. word has just confirmed that he was indeed a member of the south african communist party at the time of his arrest and it's not too much of a shock when you consider how mandela equated poverty and inequality to slavery in apartheid as social evils same quote overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity it's an act of justice it's a protection of

a fundamental human right the right to dignity and a decent life while poverty persists there is no true freedom. here's another tidbit that the mainstream media won't touch mandela never brought into america's never bought into america's war on terror not only was there fervent critic of the bush administration and spoke out against the execution of prisoners about due process he even said this about bin laden he said the labeling of a some of bin laden as the terrorist responsible for those acts before you've even been tried and convicted could also be seen as undermining some of the basic tenants of the rule of law but bin ladin wasn't the only surprising figure that mandela spoke out about and also defended moammar gadhafi and fidel castro given their support for ending apartheid in south africa it makes sense that mandela would think twice to demonize what america labels a terrorist considering how mandela himself was on the terror watch list all the way up until two thousand and eight of long with the entire african national

congress and while today's media outlets are hailing mandela as one of the most famous pacifists in modern history the reality is that while he promoted nonviolence he was not opposed to using violence when necessary here is giving his first t.v. interview ever discussing just that. i'm going to have to go to the. not withstanding i was a had to come in. and mom homes in my clothes have ties on and on the public wanted to stop them. that i meant a pimple feel that it is useless and free filter for us to continue talking peace and nonviolence against the government or supply is on this savage attacks on the defense of speaker and i think the time to come for us to consider in the

light of five speed answers in this stat or whether the methods which we have applied so far out adequate. but it's especially awkward and ironic for the corporate and political statement to be marking on mandela's legacy today because the vast majority of these people still support apartheid see a system that gives racial discrimination legitimacy is alive and well in a little country called israel and every year three billion dollars of taxpayer money is used to sponsor israel's apartheid state and oppression against the palestinians so as we commemorate the life of an amazing leader and civil rights activist let's not let white wash his real legacy. now it's our show you guys thanks for watching and have a great weekend we'll see you right back here next week to break the sat all over the day and.

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